33. Cain

CHAPTER 33

CAIN

I can't remember the last time I allowed my beast full and complete control, not in hundreds of years. Whenever my beast had come out before, it had been against my wishes and a battle of souls between the rational and darker parts of myself.

But when I see my mate pinned and naked beneath Earl Rinhold, I throw off the shackles and let him rip free.

Kill them all.

He eagerly agrees as our power locks all the doors, ensuring that no one gets in.

Or out.

Our mate has brought us through the depths of the Dream Realm and revitalized us with her sweet, decadent prayers. I intend to answer them with bloodshed in her name.

Cage and Sabre are called Strigoi in their world. I learned more about them than would have ever been possible with words while we had fallen in the Dream Realm.

I will take time to learn both of them, when our mate is safe.

First, we have useless humans to kill and my beast needs to feed.

Starting with Earl Rinhold.

He screams when I rip him off of her. His body tumbles through gauzy drapes that had parted him from a sizable crowd.

I had been around during the early years when this sort of marital ceremony had been popular. It had been distasteful then, and it's distasteful now.

Especially given that the bride in question was coerced. That's precisely why I had abolished the practice in the first place. I don't like to interfere with my Elites, unless they stray too far and require correction.

This is one of those times, once again.

Sabre goes for the Earl, but I hold up a bloodied hand. My claws had dug into the mortal's side and the graze might have been fatal, had I not held back.

But my beast and I share our intentions. Neither of us want the Earl's death to be a quick one.

He scrambles backward as I march toward him, towering over the insignificant human who ever dared to paint himself with my blood.

Now, I will return the favor.

"Cain, wait. You can't kill me," he says as screams rip through the air.

I know that the other two, the Strigoi, are feeding. They will take their fill before they comfort Scarlett. For now, they're killing everyone around her.

The most efficient way to keep her safe is to make sure no one in the vicinity is left breathing.

"Why's that?" I ask him as I grab him by his ankle and drag him toward me. My claws sink into his flesh with the motion, making him grunt in pain.

I don't just want grunts, though. I want his screams.

"We control over half the Offerings in the Magic Sector," he babbles. I imagine it's a rehearsed defense should I ever decide the Rinholds aren't worth keeping alive. "If I die, you won't know how to continue the programs. You will be decades behind without us. Centuries!"

I've heard it all before. Elites tend to be arrogant and they get ahead of themselves.

They think that monsters need them. We don't. It is a more efficient way of running things, and effective, at times, but this is all an experiment to see what'll reap the best rewards.

"Scarlett is a compatible mate," I growl.

It's difficult to talk in this form, but my beast wants me to make Edward fear us. He wants to watch the light bleed from his eyes when he knows he's lost.

I tilt my head as I drag my claw over my massive tongue, tasting Edward's blood. "But you knew that."

His chest rises and falls on his deep, panicked breaths. He knows he's going to die, but I'm waiting for him to give me what I want.

A confession.

I need to know how this happened so that Scarlett is never threatened again.

"It's because of the work at Vulcan Village," he sputters. "They stole magic tonics and genetic material from the Rinhold labs. It's the only reason their crop was so advanced."

I raise a brow as I lean in, casting a shadow over the human. "You allowed them to steal from you?"

His throat bobs on a swallow. "We needed the studies to be tested. We couldn't risk…" When his words drift off, I snarl until he continues. "My father found a way to harness dreams inside a human soul."

I go silent as I digest what this pitiful human's line had discovered.

Glancing up, I find the Duke reduced to a maimed carcass seeping fresh blood onto the floor. His blank gaze stares at us and I know I won't be pulling any truths from him.

So I turn back to his son. "Go on," I say.

He sits up as the carrot of hope is dangled in front of him. Pitiful thing. He thinks I'm interested because I want to use what he's learned.

No. I want to hear how to destroy this research before it's used against me.

"The process required death on a large scale to successfully test. So… we set them up."

Anger stirs in my chest, but I settle my beast with a promise of bloodshed very soon.

I am angry too. The destruction of Vulcan Village was my doing.

This went so much deeper than I ever could have realized. I had been manipulated from the very beginning.

"That's blasphemy," I snarl. "You sent thousands of people to their death, and an entire family, all for an experiment."

"One that worked," he says, growing bolder as he dares to lean in. My face is twice the size of his while I'm in this form. I quell the urge to bite his head clean off. "Scarlett is what she is today because of that loss of life. She sucked it all in and it changed her. My family has been watching her for years, looking for the right opportunity to bring her into our fold. With her genetics, we were going to start the perfect breeding program. One with humans who can harness the power of dreams. Imagine the possibilities, Cain. Imagine if you find others like you out there because you have something that interests them. They could just be hiding. Don't you want more alliances? Isn't that why you do all this?"

I glance to find Sabre and Cage taking their time killing their prey. They're little more than a blur of shadows painting the room with blood.

Scarlett watches them with a sense of fascination. The blood that coats her looks like a red dress, one that makes me want to lick it off. She doesn't try to hide herself now. In fact, her spine is straight with pride as she finally slinks off the bed and picks up one of the shards of the broken mirror.

And heads to her brother who limps across the floor on a broken foot.

Good girl, I think.

"Now, everything I do for her," I say, speaking to the pitiful excuse of a human being at my feet.

"There can be more like her," he promises. "That was always the plan, Lord Cain. It can still be the plan. If you give her to me, you will have our firstborn. You can even?—"

I don't allow him to finish that sentence. I shove my hand into his mouth and wrap my claws around his tongue.

And yank.

A garbled scream rips from his throat as I tear it from his mouth. Blood gushes down his chin and chest as I toss his rendered tongue onto the floor.

"You won't be needing that any longer," I say dismissively as I watch him bleed.

He doubles over and screams again, but I really have no need of him anymore. He only has one more use to me now.

I clamp my claws around his head and I allow my beast to feed.

His dark dreams pour into me and settle inside my soul. I feast on them, devouring them as I tear them apart until they're nothing more than splintered fragments in bite-sized pieces.

Edward blinks up at me, his eyes glassy with pained tears as I keep going. I take every dark dream, every subconscious thought, and everything that he hides in the deep recesses of his mind until nothing is left.

His skin pales until it turns gray. He withers before me and finally, he's gone.

"Pleassse don't do that again," Sabre says from my side. He's covered in blood and now he's in his Strigoi form, not his human one. His unnaturally long tongue seems to make it difficult for him to speak properly, but I can't talk. Everything about me in this form is oversized, including my tongue as well.

He wrinkles his nose at the carcass as it falls over into a withered clump. Edward's bloodied mouth gapes open as his eyes stare into the distance.

"Why not? That was fun," I say.

Cage appears by my side, closer than I would have expected given I hadn't seen him coming. "Can't feed on the dead," he says, glancing up at me with a toothy smile full of fangs and danger, before he vanishes again.

Rolling my eyes, I turn from them and face a beautiful Scarlett now painted in her brother's blood. My massive cock instantly goes rock hard.

"I'm done killing anyway," I say as I go to her.

My beast doesn't need bloodshed, not when our mate is naked and covered in nightmares and death.

She's the perfect depiction of an Offering.

One made just for me.